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Brighton's Zach Johnson on top in his 12-3 loss to Catholic Central's Dominick Lomazzo Friday night in Novi. The Shamrocks took the match 65-0 over the Bulldogs.(Photo: Tim Arrick/For the Livingston Daily)

NOVI — The Brighton wrestling team has heard it over and over again, people praising its talent, but also saying that it’s too young, that it’s a year or two away from being considered a serious contender for another state championship.

After Friday night’s 65-0 loss to reigning state champion Detroit Catholic Central, that statement from outsiders could prove to be true. But that’s because the Shamrocks are once again dominant, the No. 9-ranked team in the nation, according to InterMat.

It’s not because of the Bulldogs’ youth.

Despite starting seven underclassmen, the Bulldogs have gotten off to an incredible start to the 2017-18 season, opening the year 14-0, beating eight state-ranked opponents and a couple out-of-state combatants, including a 51-13 victory over Perrysburg, Ohio, on Friday night prior to the DCC match.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have been unexpected. Brighton reached the D1 quarterfinals with a similarly young group last season, and has been a consistent threat since winning its first team state championship in 2015.

The fashion in which the Bulldogs jetted out to a 14-0 start has been impressive. They had a brutal stretch to open the year, with matchups vs. No. 5 Oxford, No. 2 Warren Woods-Tower, No. 7 Walled Lake Central, No. 5 Eaton Rapids (twice), No. 7 Alma (twice), No. 8 Goodrich, and No. 9 Clarkston.

They won all of them.

And that’s with three freshmen and four sophomores playing enormous roles.

“Right now, we have two seniors in our lineup, and sometimes only one depending on how we shuffle it,” said Greathouse, whose one guaranteed senior is Nick Bleise. “But it’s one of those things where I knew coming into the season that all the guys in our lineup would be in a position to be competitive with the top guys in the state.

“It was really just a matter of getting over the mental hurdle of, ‘You’re just as good as this guy.’ The past few weeks, different guys have realized that by beating somebody they didn’t think they were capable of beating or losing a close match they didn’t think was going to be that close. And that’s why we wrestled the match we have.”

Nick Bleise of Brighton works against his Catholic Central opponent Joe Urso in Brighton's 65-0 loss to the Shamrocks. Bleise would go on to drop his match 7-3.(Photo: Tim Arrick/For the Livingston Daily)

That was clearly on display Friday night in the Bulldogs’ first match against Perrysburg, which they dominated. The underclassmen in that dual went 5-2, scoring 22 of the 51 points and giving up only nine.

Shader, Johnson, Homrock, Stevens and Stanton all won their respective matchups, with three of them scoring bonus points — Johnson and Stanton pinned their opponents, while Homrock recorded a major decision.

“We’re still obviously pretty young throughout the lineup, and there’s a lot of stuff we’re trying to overcome, physically and mentally,” Greathouse said. “Like I told them tonight, we’ve overachieved thus far, but we have the potential to have a pretty awesome season if we keep building

“They are buying into what we’re teaching them and our philosophy. I think they have shown that they can come together as a team and can be a pretty solid group from top to bottom, and we can compete with just about anybody.”

And the philosophy that the Bulldogs are most buying into is that they don’t have to wait a year or two to be taken seriously.

“We try not to do the, ‘Next year we’re going to be really good,’” Greathouse said, “Because there’s no reason that we can’t compete right now, and I think they’re proving that.”